Michael Brissenden presents AM Monday to Friday from 8:00am on ABC Local Radio and 7:10am on Radio National. Join Elizabeth Jackson for the Saturday edition at 8am on Local Radio and 7am on Radio National.

EMILY BOURKE: New South Wales police have described the mobile phone images of the alleged gang rape of a teenage girl as "harrowing".

And police say they'll spend the next few weeks looking through mobile phone records and trying to track down all copies of the video.

Superintendent Mick Plotecki says anyone found forwarding the material could face three years in jail.

MICK PLOTECKI: I'm quite surprised that this type of phenomenon is occurring. It's not a joke it's not entertainment, it's just a phenomenon that we need as a community stand up and stop.

KAREN WILLIS: It would add a whole dimension to the fear and terror and anger and shame. You know, this idea that, who knows what happened to me, who saw that?

EMILY BOURKE: Karen Willis from the New South Wales Rape Crisis Centre says the filming of sexual assault adds an extra element of torture and trauma to the victim.

KAREN WILLIS: In the past research with sex offenders had always suggested that they would go to great lengths to cover their tracks. And yet this seems to be saying, yeah look what I've done; what are you going to do about it?

EMILY BOURKE: Linda Maule from the West Australian Department of Corrective Services has researched and worked with sex offenders.

She says using mobiles to capture crime is inevitable.

LINDA MAULE: What we seem to see with crimes involving the mobile phone videoing is that you've got a group of young men who are seeking approval from their peers and there's a bravado that goes along with that.

EMILY BOURKE: And she says perhaps the best way to combat such behaviour is to make as many people as possible responsible for the crime.

LINDA MAULE: I know one of the justifications that pornography users will says is that, "well I didn'tů there's no victim involved, I wasn't the one filming, you know, I was just passing it on."

So making that person responsible for downloading or, forwarding - even though they may not have taken the images in the first place - that's not necessarily going to stop it, but it's certainly going to make some people think twice.

EMILY BOURKE: While police appeal for community help is tracking down videos of the alleged gang rape in Sydney

Karen Willis from Rape Crisis Centre says the community should be rejecting what she calls this dark side to the technology we so readily embrace.

KAREN WILLIS: The only reason that people would be putting this sort of stuff into the technological world is because there's other people who want to look at it.

So the more we can say to people "no, we don't want to see that sort of stuff, we're not going to be looking at it and if we do in fact, we're going to be reporting it to police, the more we're saying generally in terms of culture and attitude, no this stuff isn't on.